Description:Dave points out that there’s always a storm. In the middle of the storm, we need discernment to know how we’re supposed to respond; and in order to discern, we need to know that Voice, so we can follow.

Description:Tom Johnson and Steve Hanson speak on what it means to go where Jesus is and do what Jesus is doing among the least and lost, the disenfranchised, the disregarded and overlooked.Yau Stillone will be sharing how her just-completed two-year Center for Spiritual Formation experience has changed the way she looks at the world around her. Yau is walking out the truth that how we’re formed changes how we are in the world.

Description:Teaching Pastor Tom Johnson, Missional Life Pastor and Mariela Spejh Special Guest | www.thedoor.orgTom is speaking from Matthew 14:22-33. Jesus sends His disciples across the lake in a boat, a terrifying storm blows up, Jesus walks out to them (also terrifying) and utters “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid”; Peter then walks toward Him on the water. Tom has found much to bring us from this passage; and he will be joined by Mariela Spejh, the Regional Executive Director of MELA, the school with whom we’ll be sharing space this fall.

Description:David will continue with “the older brother in us all” theme from ast week. We forget that the grace the younger brother received (and the workers hired late in the day in Jesus’ Matthew 20 parable) is the same grace that WE need – and we forget that we even need it.

Description:Doug Glynn speaks on the Prodigal Son parable and the Father’s heart for His children. This time Doug focuses on the older son’s responses, which reflect our own hearts of blindness, resentment, anger, and comparison that keep us from seeing the Kingdom celebration and joy we’re invited into over lost ones being found, people being restored.

Description:Doug Glynn will continue to consider the question “How big does the YES need to be, to come against that NO?” Doug brings us a message out of Luke 15, the Prodigal Son, that is straight from the Father’s heart.

Description:Al Schuck continues to address the question Dave posed two weeks ago: “How big does the YES need to be to overcome the NO you have heard?” Al will focus on the importance of living in reality, in what is true about God, His kingdom, and His great invitation for us to live in His kingdom.

Description:Todays text: Acts 15:1-12, the Council at Jerusalem, where the Church elders had to decide whether Gentile converts needed to observe the Torah (particularly circumcision) in order to follow Jesus.“God, who knows the heart” – better than we do! (Dave’s translation) – has a different response to all of the “No’s” we’ve heard all our lives, and which we’ve often projected onto God. God’s answer to all of us – those who think we belong, and those who don’t – is “YES, YES, and YES, you belong!”

Description:Dave continues in Acts, pondering with us how we can maintain our center when the pendulum swings, as it did for those early Christians – not into bad things this time, but into wonderfully successful things.Dave proposes that maintaining our balance during seasons of success is a struggle because it’s easy, when we’re “winning,” to believe that the name that needs to be known is mine, that the story that needs to be heard is mine, and that the power people think they see is mine – all of which are deadly lies.Dave talks about how Paul navigated seasons of success – in part by knowing, that there’s a name that needs to be known, but it wasn’t his – and there’s a story that needs to be heard, but again, it wasn’t his.”

Description:Kent Carlson, co-author of Renovation of the Church, is sharing the platform with David Johnson. They share about “church as destination” vs. church as an incarnational way of living where people who are being authentically changed into the image of Christ can bring hope and real change to this broken and warring world as we express a vibrant, genuine, beautiful, real-life experience of following Jesus individually and as a community.

Description:We're jumping from Acts 13, where Barnabas and Saul were sent out by the Antioch elders on the first missionary journey, to their return and the reports of how God extended the kingdom among the Gentiles. The debate and dissension over whether these new believers should be circumcised led to the Acts 15 Council of Jerusalem, where church leaders came to some astonishing, “didn’t-see-that-coming,” conclusions. Chris LaTondresse will take us through this surprising passage, challenging us to wonder, as those first-century followers of Jesus had to, about the non-negotiables of our faith – and what things might no longer be non-negotiable – so that others might be able to enter in without boundaries or barriers.

Description:Scott continues last week’s celebration of the “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3, NIV). What does that new birth and living hope look like? Scott invites us to wonder together.

Description:Palm Sunday: branches, processions, a baby donkey. And Hosanna!! Growing up participating in joyous Palm Sunday processions, most of us thought hosanna songs were another way of saying hallelujah. But hosanna means to beseech, to cry out for salvation, to plead for rescue – hosanna is such a beautiful and utterly fitting way to enter Holy Week and the journey to the Cross and Resurrection.This Sunday, Pastor David Johnson, Annika Johnson, Joel Hanson, and the worship team invite us into the Story to find ourselves in the narrative and see (again!) our own need for rescue; to encounter grace; and to hear Jesus’ invitation to follow, to be with Him in this part of the journey.

Description:Anne-Marie speaks his Sunday, letting the story of the woman caught in adultery bring us to the cross. The woman was a sinner, which Jesus indeed confronted. But she was also being sinned against – used, threatened, indeed very nearly killed by others for their own purposes; and in confronting those who would throw the stones, Jesus protected and restored her.The cross holds all of this – our need for the judgment against us to be released and our sins forgiven; and our need for healing from our own sins and the sins of others.

Description:We know the drill, don't we: God wants us to forgive. But how do we really get to that place where we actually do forgive? How can we truly trust God with the betrayals, the wounds, the losses, or even the inconveniences and irritations? And once I’ve done the work of forgiving, what about tomorrow, when the pain of that betrayal, loss, or wounding is still there?

Description:David again takes us into the strange contradictions of the Lenten season – this week the connection between fasting and feasting. In Luke 4, we see Jesus led by the Spirit into the wilderness and fasting for 40 days. Fasting equals deprivation, right? –not doing something, not consuming something, not enjoying or participating in something. But the fasting, within the silence and solitude of the wilderness, creates a spaciousness in which to hear the Voice of God and, far from being deprived, we are able to feast on the Presence of God.

Description:The question taking us through Lent is, “How can we, as God’s people, stay on this Lenten journey that will actually bring us to the cross?” Taylor Bongard’s answer last week: we do it together. This week, Dave takes us to the connection between suffering and joy. The biblical authors frequently linked these seemingly contradictory qualities; and followers of Jesus’ Way across the centuries have discovered the same truth, that God does not hold himself aloof from the suffering of wrecked humanity, but “for the joy set before Him” enters in – and calls us to follow.

Description:On our first Sunday in this season of preparation for the coming of the cross and of resurrection, we join one another at the Table of Jesus. Taylor Bongard brings the meditation, pointing out that coming together like this is a potent reminder that we need one another as we walk out this journey.

Description:Kati takes us into Lent, asking, What am I attached to that makes me feel safe? What am I clutching so tightly, that keeps me from the ways of Jesus? What needs to die, so that God can do what He wants in me? It’s so counter to our culture, but it’s the path Jesus walked and it’s the way into which He invites us.

Description:Peter prepares us for these next six weeks: “My hope as we turn our face towards Lent is that we can say yes to our King again and be willing to pick up that Cross while keeping the hope of the Resurrection in front of us – for there is always a hope and a future in His beautiful Kingdom.”

Description:This Sunday Dave includes Acts 12 as context for our study in Acts 13. James had just been beheaded, Peter had been imprisoned, and it must have seemed that there was more death than life, more darkness than life, more lies than truth for these followers of Jesus. And in that environment, the people of the church at Antioch gave away their best resources, sending out Barnabas and Saul at the Spirit’s instruction.Our natural instincts typically are to hold back, clutching and hoarding resources; and Dave wonders, how do we sustain an outward focus and keep on going, sending, and hoping when it looks like evil is winning? What might nurture that kind of interior strength out of which we could let go of what we’re holding on to?

Description:Wayne shares his story of listening and opening up to what Jesus was calling him into. Working with Timber Bay, who “seeks out the unseen kids among us who struggle the most,” Wayne was willing and ready to join Jesus in “turning his face outward.” What took him by surprise, however, was what surfaced within himself: patterns and prejudices he didn’t think he had.

Description:Tom Johnson and David Johnson share the platform this Sunday connecting us into the Acts 13 story of listening, discerning and ultimately sending Saul and Barnabas out. God in His very nature is missional and His heart is that we would go in His Spirit's power to serve people and love them into life.

Description:Because God is by character missional what we will hear when we listen to the Spirit will be to move outward. Regrettably, human nature resists moving outward toward others in love. But that is always God’s direction, and that’s what He desires to shape in us, catching us up to join His good and glad purposes of healing and restoration.

Description:The mountains were the site of altars and shrines where the Jews would sometimes stray from worship of Jehovah, instead offering sacrifices to counterfeit gods to try to ward off war, famine, and disease. We're no different – we can tend to “head for the hills” and our own counterfeit gods at the smallest threat of discomfort or disapproval. But the psalmist emphatically declares that God’s invitation is to be anchored in the reality that “my help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.”

Description:Dave speaks this Sunday about Joseph, Mary’s fiancé. He gets only scant mention in Scripture. He wasn’t the star of the story, none of his words were recorded. Like Mary, though, he was willing to say yes to God’s invitations despite the cost.Joseph knew the story wasn’t about him; he was willing to accept his secondary role and bear the cost of obedience. This kind of faith-filled humility is worth studying and growing into.

Description:Scripture often shows us people who are waiting. Waiting for a child. Waiting to be set free. Waiting to become king. Waiting to return from exile. Waiting for God to speak, to break in, to do something. The good news, in the waiting, is that we wait together. AS the people of God, and WITH the people of God, we wait together for the inbreakings of God.

Description:his Sunday Anne-Marie Finsaas brings us to the second week of Advent with the reassurance that, from the moment Adam and Eve disobeyed, God has had a rescue plan and has broken into history time and again to bring restoration and wholeness. But we’re also still waiting for complete restoration. Advent, is the time that we look back to remember; and we wait together with the people of God as we look forward in both desperation and hope.

Description:David finishes the series on sexuality, calling us to be aware of the ways we've bent into the things of this earth to try to find the life that comes only from God. The cure is to stand up straight into who it is God has called us to be which is better than we've ever imagined!

Description:Paul’s words in 1 Thess 4:3-4, is an invitation but worded quite strongly, that “this is God’s will for you, your sanctification… that you know how to possess your own body in holiness and honor.” What does it mean to “possess my body in honor”? And how has “living in Samaria” obscured and scattered how I even think about God’s desires for wholeness in this area of sexuality?

Description:This Sunday is our Novembering service when, as a community, we gather to remember those who are no longer among us, and to invite God into our places of grief and mourning. The context for our remembering is the Communion Table, where we come to God, and we come together, not trying to do this journey of loss and sorrow alone.